As the owner of Exodus, most people think I am better read than I actually am. Really, I am more a collector than an avid reader, but I love the feel and smell of old books, so that is where the majority of my reading interests lie.
Not exactly older the better: while I have read The Iliad and The Odyssey, some Jane Austen and a lot of Mark Twain, I have not read a great many of the other classics, through I hope to actually finish Virgil's Aeneid one of these years and fully intend to get through at least one Tolstoy in my lifetime. A lot of my favorites were written during the earlier part of the 20th century—and not all of them are considered great literature.
Most of my favorite books are historical or realistic fiction of some type. I particularly enjoy authors like C. S. Forster (the Horatio Hornblower books), Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, and Thomas B. Costain. I collect old G. A. Henty novels and several series of children's histories like the Landmarks and We Were There books. I'm also a pretty big fan of C. S. Lewis's Narnia series and Space Trilogy, J. R. R.Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Walter Wangerin's Book of the Dun Cow.
While I agree that our world can be quite dark at times and that there's a place for reading literature that depicts some horrors we have to deal with, those stories are not my typical fare. I (and my family) prefer stories which depict loving families enjoying their lives. So Cheaper by the Dozen, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, All-of-a-Kind Family, and Papa's Wife remain some of our special favorites.
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